Telecom User Base Falls To 893.15 Million

New Delhi: Telecom subscriber base fell by over 2 million to 893.15 million at the end of January 2013 due to "large scale disconnections of inactive sims by some of the service providers", Trai said today.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India decreased to 893.15 million at the end of January, 2013 from 895.51 million at the end of December 2012 ...," Trai said in a statement.

Total wireless subscriber or mobile phone user base declined to 862.62 million at the end of January, 2013 from 864.72 million at the end of December, 2012.

Trai attributed the decline in subscriber base "to large scale disconnection by some of the service providers."

Tata Teleservices lost 1.87 million users, the maximum among the operators, during the month and its user base now has been reduced to 67.68 million at the end of January 2013.

Aircel lost 1.77 million subscribers while Uninor lost 1.40 million users and their user base now stands at 61.57 million and 40.11 million, respectively.

Videocon and Sistema Shyam Teleservices lost 1.38 million and over 520,000 million subscribers, respectively.

However, Idea Cellular added 2.45 million subscribers, maximum among operators during the month, to take its user base to 116.39 million while Airtel added 2.28 million new users to take its base to 184.19 million.

State run BSNL added 0.31 million and Vodafone added 0.22 million new subscribers and their user base now stands at 100.24 million and 147.70 million, respectively.

Wireline subscriber base declined from 30.79 million at the end of December, 2012 to 30.52 million at the end of January, 2013, Trai said.

Trai said during January "the share of urban wireless subscribers has decreased from 61.65 per cent to 61.31 per cent whereas share of rural wireless subscribers has increased from 38.35 per cent to 38.69 per cent.

It added the overall wireless teledensity in the country has reached 70.57 at the end of January.

Mobile Number Portability requests increased from 80.06 million subscribers at the end of December 2012 to 84.26 million at the end of January 2013.

In the month of January 2013 alone, 4.20 million requests have been made for MNP, Trai said.

Broadband subscription reached 15.01 million in January 2013 from 14.98 million in December 2012.